It was a childhood play.The players stand around a large circle drawn with chalk.When the referee of the game says "In the pond" the children will jump inside the circle. When he/she says "on the banks", they have to jump out.After repeating the same few times ,the referee will unexpectedly repeat in the pond..or on the banks twice.The careless will be trapped and they go out.The game goes on,just like our lives.So one has to be vigilant to be in tune with the referee at the remote end!

Sunday, August 24, 2014

The Nehrus and The Gandhis-An Indian Dynasty

PART-I

The 300 page book penned by Tariq Ali and first
published in 1985 with an introduction by Salman Rushdie, is of course a
historical rendering worth reading. The author has covered a time span of 95
years, 1889 to 1984, to be precise; Or in other words, from the birth of
Jawahar Lal to the ‘reign’ of his grandson Rajiv Gandhi. That is, it doesn’t
cover Rajiv’s assassination, Sonia taking over the helm of affairs and later
sharing it with her son Rahul. And recently the channels have reported that
Priyanka is going to assume charge of the Congress party! She has denied it anyway;
Good heavens, long live the dynasty!

At the outset, let me say that the name of the book
sounded a little misnomer, at least to me who still consider ‘Gandhi’ as
Mahatma Gandhi . The author might have named thus considering the patriarchal
heresy of Rajiv Gandhi as son of Feroze Gandhi.
I have recently read Gandhiji’s great
grandson Anand Gokani mentioned as
‘Gandhi kin’. Yes, what it definitely counts is whether the dissent is maternal
or paternal!

The book, a truthful –that’s what I felt-compilation
of political as well as personal lives of the Nehru Family, is very much
readable and not at all drab. It is a very fascinating 95 year long journey
through the annals of Indian history and partly world history. The story of a
family turning out to be that of a great nation! ‘The Parties’ and ‘The Politicians’, are also
listed for easy reference.

This is simply my scribbling on the book, ie, a review is not in my purview. The quotes from
the book are either given as " " or thus -. Let the book speak for itself.

The Nehrus were the descendants of Raj Kaul who was
relocated to Allhabad from Kashmir. “The immigrant from Kashmir was provided
with land and house adjoining a canal. The Urdu word for canal is nehar .” Thus the one’s from the canal
came to be known as Neharis and later on
Nehru’s.

Some word meanings- Allahabad- City of God: Pakisthan-Land
of the pure: Motilal-Red pearl: Jawaharlal -precious stone; And the word Gandhi
literally meant grocer!

Why did the British deny mass education to Indians?

-The British consciously decided not to alter the rural landscape of India. To do so, they believed would rapidly create the conditions for their own removal from the region.

-They denied mass education and as Lord Macaulay desired, they created a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions they govern. Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.

There are many anecdotes in the book, which none of us might have come across in our history lessons.

·Nehru, Feroze,
Indira, Subhash Chandra Bose and the like were referred to as the left wing
sympathizers within Congress!

·

After the Chauri
Chaura incident, 3 congress volunteers who were poor peasants, were arrested
and hanged after trial. They have never
appeared in the Congress list of martyrs. Neither Gandhi nor Congress working
committee shed tears on their behalf.

·Gandhi had refused
to plead Bhagath Singh’s case-(the book answers the question why).

·

General Dyer,
responsible for the massacre in Jallianwalla Bagh, and Nehru happened to travel
together in the same compartment, on a trip to Delhi from Amritsar! Nehru
himself has recorded it in his autobiography.

-The butcher of Jallianwallah Bagh and the future
Prime Minister of India travelling, even sleeping, in the same compartment was
history’s more grotesque ironies”, says the author.

·Nehru women had
participated in the remembrance week held
for the martyrs of Jallianwala Bagh. Nehru
was in prison.

-At the head of the demonstration, which was illegal, there
was a frail old woman dresses in white .She was batton- charged by the police
and received several blows to the head, until a police officer recognized her,
lifted her from the ground, put in her in a car and drove home. The woman was
SWARUP RANI(Nehru’s mother).

·Other ironies-

Nehru offered
huge sums to the royal families of the erstwhile Princely States to integrate
with the Indian Union. His daughter cut down all these privileges
during 1971.

In 1947, the Delhi Muslims who lost all their fortunes
and relatives stayed back in Delhi without fleeing to Pak honouring the requests
by Abul Kalam Azad and Nehru. But after 29 years, Nehru’s grandson, watched by
his daughter rendered them homeless-(The Turkman Gate incident). Nehru had left strict instructions in his will that he he was not to be given a religious funeral.But his daughter raised a religious funeral for him.

·

In November 1937
the ‘Calcutta Modern Review’ published an anonymous article which argued that
men like Nehru, were endangering democracy. “...In spite of his brave talk , Jawaharlal
is obviously tired and stale.....Let us not spoil him by too much adulation and
praise....” It run thus and surely did create a furore. That anonymous letter
was written by none other than Nehru himself!

·Nehru’s “An Autobiography”-
was reprinted nine times in the year of publishing itself!

·Nehru and Gandhi
had to release press statements-that is public explanations- as to why
Feroze-Indira marriage was endorsed!

-India’s two most important political leaders had been
compelled, at a politically critical moment, to expend part of their energy on
justifying the decision of two people to marry each other.

·Feroze once
questioned Nehru on some security bungle and ultimately the PM Nehru had to
apologize to the MP Feroze in Parliament.

Quotes

-The Ganga is a liquid history of India.

-Family life has traditionally been seen as a refuge
from the pain and cold of the world that lies outside..The bruises inflicted
are often invisible. Even when the actual pain has gone, the suppressed anger
can stay with the victim for the rest of his life.

-“Ever changing, yet ever the same”- by Nehru. This
was my favourite quote once but what I had in mind was “ever changing, ever
flowing, yet ever the same Ganga”. No, it was wrong. The quote was on Moon,
Nehru’s only companion in prison.

-His(Nehru’s)
parents and his wife were now all dead; his link with the past was
broken. He decided it was time to strengthen his links with the future.

-Our educated community is not a cultured community, but
a community of qualified candidates-Rabindranatha Tagore

-“How did you manage
to so wonderfully isolate yourself from the people, in such a short
space of time? ”Nehru, to Congress leaders of Kerala after they lost the 1957 elections to communists.-that he (Nehru) was happiest when attacked by the
right for being “soft on socialism and communalism” and by the left for being
“an agent of capitalism and reaction." That, he would say, “makes me feel I’m
on the right course."

-Never do anything in secret or anything that you wish
to hide. For the desire to hide anything means you are afraid, and fear is a
bad thing and unworthy of you....Nehru to Indira in the first of his 200
letters from prison.

-“Little did we guess, that we would never see his
wide toothless smile again, nor feel the glow of protection”-Indira on Gandhiji’s
assassination.

-"We never hated you personally"-Indira to Churchill at
London when he was amazed that a man(Nehru) the British had locked up for many
years seemed to harbor no ill will. Churchill’s answer was "But I did, I did."

-Morarji Desai was an oddball even in the fad-ridden
world of Hinduism